1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid-discharging apparatus that forms dot arrays or dots by discharging a predetermined liquid from liquid-discharging nozzles provided in a liquid-discharging head.
2. Description of the Related Art
In known serial-head ink-jet printers, a print head having a size shorter than the print width of recording paper performs printing while moving from side to side. In this case, in order to prevent printing failure due to clogging of ink-discharging nozzles, idle discharging of ink is performed in a state in which the print head is positioned at a waste-ink receiver provided outwardly separate from the recording paper, and nozzle cleaning is performed by absorbing ink in a state in which the print head is positioned at an ink-absorbing mechanism provided in a head cap outwardly separate from the recording paper.
It is relatively easy to do nozzle cleaning in the serial-head ink-jet printers in which printing is performed by the print head that is reciprocally moving from side to side. Even when idle discharging into the waste-ink receiver is performed, the amount of discharged ink is small and the ink naturally dries because the print head has a small number of nozzles. Accordingly, the user does not need to replace the waste-ink receiver at appropriate intervals of use.
In recent years, full-line print heads have been provided which extend long along the width of one side of a recording sheet (e.g., A4-size sheet). In such full-line print heads, arrays of ink-discharging nozzles are arranged in a length substantially equal to the print width of the recording sheet. Therefore, when idle discharging into the waste-ink receiver is performed in order to prevent print failure due to the clogging of the ink-discharging nozzles, the amount of discharged ink is larger than that in the serial heads, and the user sometimes needs to replace the waste-ink receiver at appropriate intervals of use.
In this case, it is necessary to inform the user as to the timing of replacement of the waste-ink receiver. A technique of giving such information is proposed in, for example, Japanese Patent No. 2755791 (page 1, FIG. 5). In this publication, the accumulated number of operations of forcibly discharging a predetermined amount of ink from the ink-discharging nozzles during a discharging recovery process is counted and stored beforehand, and it is determined whether the waste-ink receiver can receive more ink before a new discharging recovery process is performed. When it is determined that the waste-ink receiver cannot receive more ink, a warning to replace the waste-ink receiver is given.
In the technique disclosed in the above publication, the number of ink discharging operations in every discharging recovery process is counted, the accumulated number is stored, and it is determined whether the waste-ink receiver can receive ink discharged in the next recovery process, on the basis of the stored accumulated number. However, this technique is not applicable to a print head which also includes a cleaning member that wipes (absorbs) ink while moving on the nozzle surface, and in which the amount of ink absorbed by the cleaning member is detected, and the timing of replacement of the cleaning member is determined by the accumulated amount of absorbed ink. Therefore, in a print head having both a waste-ink receiver and a cleaning member, it is sometimes impossible to properly determine the timings of replacement of the discharged-receiver and the cleaning member during the use.